Los Angeles Looks Really Amazing When You're Hanging Out of a Helicopter

Director and Pulitzer-Prize-winning photographer Vincent Laforet tells Curbed that capturing Los Angeles for his latest project was a challenge, not only because it doesn't have a nucleus, but also because, well, it's big. Laforet is working on a photo series of US cities shot from veeery high up, which he takes while hanging out of a helicopter. From 10,000 feet in the air, Laforet says that not only was LA the most "peaceful" city he's photographed thus far for his aerial series, but it was also surprisingly colorful. He notes that LA's mix of LED lights, older sodium vapor lights, and fluorescents made for a noticeable collage of blue, orange, and green in the photos—he chalks the distinctions up to economics, with more affluent areas lit with those blue LEDs and the poorer areas with the older, orange lights.

Laforet told Gizmodo in January that, for many years, photographic technology just wasn't able to support snapping night images from this high up: "These are pictures I've wanted to make since I was in my teens, but the cameras simply have not been capable of capturing aerial images from a helicopter at night until very recently."

Laforet's photos were taken over two nights in January and April of this year, he writes on his blog.

The full set of Laforet's photos of Los Angeles can be seen here on Storehouse. You can also sign up to pre-order a book on his Air series here.

LaforetAIR Los Angeles from Vincent Laforet on Vimeo.

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